The Blog of Less Renown, celebrating under-appreciated unusual, unique, sick or strange Singers, Songwriters and Songs

Friday, May 09, 2014

The Sound of...Ronald Colman doing Paul Simon?

Last week, you got to hear a fairly inept, cheap version of "Sound of Silence," related to Paul Simon's recent court embarrassment.

Response was overwhelming. "Is there a version even worse?"

Below...a contender.

It's from a 101 Strings album called "Sounds of Love."

Rather than simply allow the overly ripe catgut twangers to do their thing, somebody thought it would be helpful to have a "romantic" narrator recite the lyrics.

Yes, narration with the 101 strings prodding from behind.

Yes, well before William Shatner began to make a name for himself with this type of thing, here's some guy affecting a kind of Ronald Colman cadence as he reads, and occasionally "improves upon" the words of Mr. Simon.

2 comments:

Thanks...that was a funny and interesting piece. Why use Kickstarter when you can outsmart Spotify. Or did they? We'll know in a few weeks?

Just in case The Independent removes links after a month or two, here, for late readers, is a portion of what it was about...a wiseguy rock group raising money via 30 second "songs" that they asked their fans to relentlessly keep playing. IE, why pay (as Kickstarter asks) when you can get Spotify to foot the bill....the band's 30 second tracks were just, yes, the sound of silence:

The band’s drummer and keyboard player, 26-year-old Jack Stratton, explained the strategy in a YouTube video, explaining that the royalties from the scheme would fund a tour of totally free gigs, with a route taking in all the cities and towns where Sleepify was played most.

Mr Stratton and his bandmates Theo Katzman, Woody Goss and Joe Dart have released three previous albums as Vulfpeck. Sleepify consists of 10 tracks with titles including “Z”, “Zzz” and “Zzzzzz”. Spotify’s average rate for royalties is $0.007 per track streamed, and a song must be played for at least 30 seconds to register.

All the tracks on Sleepify clock in at 31 or 32 seconds; an eight-hour night of continuous streams could thus generate more than $5 in royalties.

Shortly after the LP’s release, the band tweeted: “Please don’t ‘shuffle’ Sleepify. I know this might come off snobbish, but we spent a lot of time on track order”.

Vulfpeck’s Twitter following is a little over 1,600 people, but their fanbase is clearly passionate. In an interview with the website Vice, Mr Stratton said he believed the band was now owed approximately $20,000 in royalties.

When Spotify became aware of the scheme, however, the band received an email telling them that Sleepify violated the service’s terms and conditions. A Spotify spokesman told Billboard, “It’s a clever stunt but we prefer Vulfpeck’s earlier albums.”

The album has since been removed from the service, and it is not yet clear whether the band will receive the money. “My guess is we will,” Mr Stratton told Vice. “Spotify pays two months after the listen. So we’ll know in May sometime.”